The ASUS Eee PC 900 Press Launch this morning was the first time that I’ve attended a PR event that’s not primarily for bloggers. Thanks to Abe for the spur-of-the-moment endorsement of invitation. The press launch was held at the swanky Makati Shangri-La Hotel in Ayala Center Makati and its basically what you expect it to be: basically a series of presentations (including one from Intel and Microsoft each) showing of the drool-worth ASUS Eee PC 900, a worthy successor to the wildly popular Eee PC 701 (which I still don’t have). And the answer to the grand question? The Eee PC 900 costs 25 thousand pesos in the Philippines (about US$590).

There are already numerous places on the Web where you can get the specs of this ultraportable machine, including an in-depth review from the folks at eeeuser.com so I won’t anymore repeat those. The interesting things came when Ethan Hung, the Apac 1 regional marketing manager for ASUS, sat by the bloggers’ table and answered our questions. Apparently, ASUS aims to release a lot of newer models of the Eee PC line this year. This includes models with Intel’s new Atom mobile processor, touchscreen models, longer-life batteries (which supposedly can run for five hours even with Wi-Fi turned on), 10-inch models and other eyebrow-raising features. Given the fact that they said that they would release touchscreen models earlier this year but did not push through, I would take Mr. Hung’s pronouncements with a grain of salt.

I found the participation of Microsoft in the Eee PC phenomenon quite amusing. It’s obvious that the new ultraportable market will be quite big and Microsoft cannot afford to lose OS market share due to the influx of Linux-powered mobile devices. So they were able to snag a deal with ASUS to sell Eee PC’s with Windows XP built in. This is a funny because its obvious that no cheap ultraportable has enough horsepower to run Windows Vista so they had to settle with Windows XP. But, but, but, Microsoft said that they will end support for XP by the middle of this year. Hmmm. (See relevant blog article.)

During the press launch, Microsoft pointedly said that Windows is “familiar” and that if you want to introduce PCs to newbies, then you should go with Windows. This despite the fact that lots of people find the customized Xandros Linux used by ASUS to be quite user-friendly. Another amusing incident was when the Microsoft rep was showing off the Microsoft products installed into the Eee PC and got into the sharing photos on the Internet bit. He paused for a while trying to think of a photo-sharing website before blurting out Photobucket. It was obvious that he was trying not to mention Yahoo!’s Flickr nor Google’s Picasa. Hehehe.

And no, there were no Eee PCs raffled off or given out aside from the grand prize in the ASUS Eee PC Dress mEee Up contest (official website). Abe said that Taiwanese companies are spendthrift like that.

I’ll update this post later when I finish uploading a couple of videos on YouTube.